Train travel - Again!

This doesn’t answer your bus question. But may help with trains. I find Italian trains very easy to use.

Which websites and apps are you looking at? Use only TrenItalia and ItaloTreno. All others are third party vendors. Google Maps can help you plan but use the apps and websites for accurate routes, times and cost.
https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html
https://www.italotreno.com/en

When is your trip? Many prices reset in June and may not show now. Prices for the same route will vary depending on the class and type of train.

If you haven’t downloaded the two train apps, do so. Set up your accounts. Purchase and ticketing is much easier.

The two big train companies are Trenitalia - which is the state train company and runs local and fast trains - and .Italo - which runs only fast trains between some large cities.

https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html
https://www.italotreno.com/en

Fast trains are generally available 2-3 months before the date and can be bought at (sometimes significant) savings by purchasing ahead of time by trading price for flexibility. The cheaper they are then less flexible. Fast trains have classes and reserved seats. Unless you're going a really long distance there is not much difference in the various classes.

Local trains are called regionale and can't sell you, don't have reserved seats and the price never changes. Buy these as you need them.

Trains - especially in the north - are pretty reliable and work well and can be counted on. Both companies have apps that let you check schedules, buy tickets and track trains in real time and I recommend getting at least the Trenitalia app.

Hope that helps,
=Tod

Right, Judy. Use the websites Horsewoofie & Hiredman provided. While Regionale rates for the same daily routes usually stay the same, there can be a difference between the price for a Regionale train and an Intercity train (when those are a choice), and Intercity trains at different times of the day.

Be sure you're using the Italian spelling for Genoa (Genova), Turin (Torino) and Milan (Milano) and know which stations you need to depart from/arrive to. As well, it looks like your trip isn't until August? If so, you really don't need to book anything this early, and if your train journey is on a Regionale train, you don't need to buy tickets until the day you depart: no seat reservations on those. You DO reserve seats on Intercity trains but it's still much too early.

https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/trenitalia-intercity-trains.htm

one thing to add: I've had my train tickets disappear from the trenitalia app a couple times. a friend of mine who went to Italy last year warned me about this as well. I was able to get them again, using the ticket code on my receipts, and I've now saved them to my wallet on my phone.

When you ask about buses do you mean local travel within a city? In that case the buses are reliable to the degree traffic allows them to be. Trains and buses - and in some cities metros - are the main means of transportation so they are generally well organized and run well because people depend on them every day.

Check the cities you are visiting but many places in Italy have converted to "tap on" buses where you can just tap a credit card when you get on as a replacement for hassling with paper tickets. Generally everyone needs their own credit card per fare, so no multiple fares on the same card. Generally an "area" will all work the same. For instance all of Tuscany has converted to tap on buses but many other places are following on. All the buses in Rome were tap on when I was there in March.
Some cities have transit pass card for tourists that have complete travel for a day or multi-day period. These aren't always a great value but they can reduce hassle and worry at the very least.

Google Maps generally works "okay" for bus schedules and route finding. CityMapper is great phone app for mass transit inside a city and is more complete than Google Maps but generally only works in big cities.

Intercity or long range buses seem to be designed to be confusing to non-Italians and generally run by overlapping bus companies.
In this case I would post a question about a specific bus route if you can't lock it down from the information on-line.

Have a great trip,
=Tod

Judy, I will try to helpful here. We only ever use Trenitalia and just booked Milan-Santa Margherita Ligure, plus La Spezia-Rome.
Helpful tips that we seem to have re-learned for the nth time:

-there is a definite time-out limit while attempting to finalize a reservation; sometimes that is displayed.
-one may not book certain trains too far ahead.
-the good ole site 'Man in Seat 61' answers a great many questions about train travel per country, per route, per line et al.
-beware the requests for you to OK 'added guaranteed coverage' or somesuch BS; we just got charged 12 euros for that even though we never asked for, nor OKed it.

Tante belle cose.
I am done. The end.

Italotreno does not go between Milan and Genoa or Genoa and Turin, so that leaves Trenitalia. If you are going to Genoa directly from Milan Malpensa Airport, do not buy advance tickets because you cannot predict when your plane actually lands and how long to get through passport control. Just buy whe you get to the airport train station and you can get the next departure.

Trenitalia's high speed and long distance trains tickets are never sold 2 or 3 months in advance, it's 6 months in advance or more. I'm afraid the above info is wrong, whereas it may be right regarding discounted tickets.

I'll try to explain how dynamic pricing works. From Genoa to Turin Trenitalia runs 6 direct Intercity trains, but only one direct high speed train: the Frecciarossa #8606 that departs from Genoa Piazza Principe station at 11:56 AM.

The Freccia #8606 is the most high-priced option between Genoa and Turin. If you enter December 12 as day of travel, only the expensive BASE (aka walk-up) fare tickets are available. But if you enter August 31, the system shows many discounted tickets on sale for the same 8606 train. BASE: 33 € per person vs SuperEconomy: 14.9 €.

Between Milan and Genoa Trenitalia runs 2 direct Freccias and 14 direct Intercity trains any day. It works the same way: in short, If you see only BASE tickets it's either too late or too early.

The Intercity trains departing from Genoa are a little slower and a little cheaper than the Freccias, simply because there are no high speed tracks running under the mountains north of Genoa. Not yet, but they keep on digging.

Of course you could also take the slow and cheap Regionale trains that depart daily from Genoa. The Regionale trains make many intermediate stops on the way to Turin and Milan, but they have no reserved seating and can't sell out. The price of Regionale trains is fixed, no discounts for early birds.

beware the requests for you to OK 'added guaranteed coverage' or somesuch BS; we just got charged 12 euros for that even though we never asked for, nor OKed it.

The Ticket Refund option for discounted fares costs 2 Euro per ticket, not 12. You must accept the T&C at least twice and it's a great option when you get tickets so early.